Suspicion of Guilt

by Barbara Parker

  She looked at him, surprised, then nodded.

  "The detective would like to know what you and Patrick were doing at Althea Tillett's house. Do not discuss how you got in."

  "Should I talk to him?"

  "Yes. But stop immediately if I tell you to."

  "We were looking for Rosa Portales." She explained that Rosa might know what Althea Tillett had done with her prior will.

  Anthony said, "Gary, could we get that address from you?"

  Gail wondered how he could possibly have worked into a first-name relationship with a homicide cop in ten minutes.

  Davis nodded. "Don't see why not. Rosa didn't have nothing to say to me about any will, you understand. She found Mrs. Tillett's body, that's about it."

  "You know where she is?" Gail asked.

  "Hialeah. She's living with her sister."

  Gail shifted in the chair. Her hip hurt. "Detective, have you ever heard of a man named Frankie Delgado? He has an office on Drexel Avenue. A company named Seagate. They supposedly sell promotional items, but I think he's a pimp or something."

  Anthony raised a hand to cut her off, then changed his mind and dropped it to his lap. "Go on. Tell him what you did. Maybe he knows about this man."

  She gave Anthony a hard look, then started her story at the door of the rundown office building on Drexel and took it upstairs. A minute later, Davis was grinning. "This Frankie Delgado sounds like one sleazy little punk. I don't have anything on him, though. There's a lot going on we don't know about. And you went in there playing like a hooker? Mmmmmm." He laughed and glanced at Anthony, who wasn't smiling.

  Gail said, "It may have nothing to do with the forgery, you see, but—well, Seagate owns another company—Gateway Travel Agency. Do you know it?"

  "Sure. Up Alton Road a few blocks."

  "The woman who notarized the will works for Gateway. Carla Napolitano. She wasn't even in Florida on the date the will was supposedly signed. Anthony, did you tell him about Carla?"

  "We didn't get to that," he said.

  She asked stonily, "Well? May I?"

  "Go ahead."

  Gail spent a minute or two telling Gary Davis why she had gone to Gateway Travel—including the part about pretending to want an exotic weekend for herself and her married cardiologist lover. Anthony's face was expressionless, but his fingers tapped a slow rhythm on his thigh.

  "Hang on a second." Davis lifted his phone, punched a number. He said, "Donna? You know that case last night up on Collins and Fiftieth? Yeah. What was the lady's name? ... Uh-huh. Thanks." He hung up and turned his brown eyes toward Gail.

  "What?" Gail asked, knowing something was wrong. "What is it?"

  "Carla Napolitano died last night. Fell off her balcony. Or jumped. We don't know yet. Front door was locked. Tenth floor, right onto the parking lot. Not pretty."

  "Ohhh."

  Anthony bent to look at her, then gently took her hands away from her face. He reached into his pocket for his handkerchief. "Gail. Take this."

  Finally the shock of the fight, the humiliating arrest, and her own inability to help Patrick or herself crashed over her, sweeping her momentarily into a whirl of grief and confusion. She wanted to fall into Anthony's arms, but he remained in his chair, only his hand on the back of hers.

  Davis asked, "Ms. Connor? How well did you know the woman?"

  "We only met that one time. She didn't even know who I was." Gail wiped her nose. "It must have been an accident. She wouldn't have killed herself. Her daughter just had a new baby. She was going to move to New Jersey."

  Davis clasped his hands on his desk. "I'd like to hear some more about this."

  Anthony said, "Let me take her home, Gary. I'll talk to her first."

  Gail watched them bring Patrick out of the cell. He was still depressed, but she didn't think he would hang himself. Anthony told him the bondsman would send a bill, which Gail could pay out of Patrick's cost account at Hartwell Black. Patrick thanked them both and kissed Gail's cheek before he was taken away in handcuffs.

  "Will he be all right in jail, do you think?"

  "For two hours? He'll be fine," Anthony said. He spoke as if he were watching something far in the distance.

  "I do hate to bother you, but my car is in the parking garage at my office," Gail said sweetly. "Would you drive me there?"

  "Of course."

  They rode the elevator to the lobby in silence. Anthony stared at the doors. They walked outside. Gail was limping slightly. It was dark now, and men with filthy clothes and matted hair were staking out their places on the curving white concrete benches between the police station and city hall.

  Just beyond the front terrace of the building, Gail whirled on him. "I suppose I should thank you for helping Patrick. All right. Thank you. Now you can go to hell!"

  To her surprise, Anthony sank down on the low wall that bordered the long ramp to the street. Light came dimly from underneath. He put his elbows on his knees and clenched his fingers in his hair.

  "Ah, Gail. Why? ¿Porqué me haces asi? Why do I let you do this to me?" He groaned. "Estoy perdiendo mi mente."

  Losing his mind. As if she weren't. Arms crossed, she glared at him. "You were awful up there. You treated me like shit!”

  "I know. I'm sorry."

  A dozen yards away, a gray-bearded man in plaid pants and a striped pullover was watching them. He pushed the top of a paper bag down past the neck of a bottle.

  She looked back at Anthony. "You wouldn't even touch me. As if I were ... tainted. Or ... violated." Her voice shook. "Which is exactly what I feel like."

  He finally raised his head, then without speaking stood up and pulled her to him, locking one arm around her neck, the other around her waist. He kissed her mouth, her cheeks.

  "Anthony!" She got her hands on his chest and pushed. "Let go!"

  "I couldn't have touched you in Davis's office." He held her tighter. "I would have wanted to hold you like this. With them, I had to be your lawyer, nothing else. If you knew what I thought on the way here! ¡Me asustas! Mirta told me you were in a fight, in jail, injured. I was so afraid."

  "You?"

  "Yes. Loving you is like watching a blind person cross a highway."

  "Oh, thank you very much."

  "My heart is going to stop." He laughed, one hand on his chest.

  Wincing, Gail picked up her purse, which had fallen off her shoulder. "Are you going to drive me to my office, or not?"

  A thin voice came from the plaza. "Kiss her some more!" Then a cackle. It was the old man with the paper bag. He raised it in a toast, then took a deep swallow of whatever was inside.

  Anthony grabbed her hand. "Let's get out of here."

  "Slow down! My hip hurts."

  The sun was gone, and lights poured from the windows along Washington Avenue. His convertible waited at the next comer. He took his car keys out of his pocket. "Where is Karen?"

  "With my mother. Why?"

  He found the right key and unlocked the passenger side. "Let's go to a hotel." He took her purse and tossed it into the car. "We have time. Don't worry about your clothes. I'll give you my jacket. On South Beach who would notice?"

  Gail stared at him.

  Anthony shrugged. "Here we are. What are you going to do at home?"

  "You didn't want to see me for a while, remember?"

  "I was angry."

  "Well, I happen to be a little pissed off myself."

  "Gail—" He raised his palms to her face, but she pulled away. "I am sorry. Let me show you how sorry I am." He came closer, and this time she didn't move. "You scared me, that's all." He kissed the bruise on her jaw. She felt his breath on her cheek. He laughed softly. "I think it does something to me. Gail, please. Let's find a hotel."

  "You are out of your mind."

  "Then say we're on Mykonos, in the Aegean, and it's summer." He kissed both corners of her mouth. His lips were warm and soft. "Or tell me you've been there, and I'll take you back to your office. Y
ou can get in your car and go home."

  He looked straight into her eyes, and his were bottomless and the ground under her feet was giving way, and he knew it, damn him. She could already feel the white-hot sun and the surge of the sea.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Gail sat at her desk reading the article in the local section of the Miami Herald for the third time. There was a short piece on Patrick Norris's case: "CHARITIES COULD LOSE IN FIGHT OVER ESTATE."

  Between the lines she could see the real story: Estranged nephew hires slick downtown lawyers to contest the will. But not only is the nephew greedy, he's a nut case. He wants to buy up property in the inner city and turn it into communal farms. And a dangerous nut case: He broke into the decedent's house and beat up her stepson, Rudolph W. Tillett, Jr. Then at the end of the article came a nasty postscript: "Miami Beach Police confirm that Althea Tillett's death has been ruled a homicide. Detective Gary Davis stated that her neck was broken by an intruder, but would not speculate as to suspects or motive."

  Somebody with a sense of humor had pinned the article to the bulletin board in the coffee room with a caption: "Are you homicidal? Psychotic? Call Hartwell Black & Robineau today for free consultation!" Gail had tossed it into the garbage.

  The firm got another kick in the ribs from the "Legal Notes" column in the business section: " 'Unfortunately, the management committee saw an easy win and high fees with this case,' stated one source. Associate Gail A. Connor, who brought the case into the firm, refused comment."

  Gail didn't know if G. Howard Odell was behind this, but he had to love it. He had arranged a meeting for two o'clock today, Monday. He would arrive in the company of Sanford Ehringer's personal attorney from Palm Beach, along with local counsel from a scorched-earth litigation firm taking over the probate from Alan Weissman. Gail could only assume that Alan Weissman was busy getting drunk.

  The meeting would be held in Paul Robineau's office, with Jack Warner and Larry Black in attendance. It would be worth it, Gail thought, just to see the bared teeth, if she herself were not in danger of being set upon like a cat in a pack of wild dogs.

  At noon Gail would meet with Paul, Jack, and Larry. Three pairs of eyes fixed on her, waiting for her to explain what she had been doing and why. She could already hear their questions: Can we force the beneficiaries to settle or not? If not, will we get our asses whipped in court?

  Gail glumly dropped the newspaper into the trash can under her desk. She had not been able to recognize Patrick in the article she had read. Odd how the truth could get skewed like that. She had to keep reminding herself what it was.

  Patrick had been released from jail on $2,500 bond. Anthony Quintana would appear at the arraignment in three weeks. Meanwhile, he would try to plea-bargain the charges down to misdemeanors. He would send Hartwell Black and Robineau his bill—$300 per hour.

  Anthony's phone call on Saturday morning, conveying all this, had been in lieu of seeing her over the weekend. He apologized, but had a trial in federal court to prepare for. Gail said she certainly understood; she was busy too. And then there came a silence, and it continued one beat too long. They rushed to fill it with banalities, but neither of them mentioned Friday night on South Beach.

  He hadn't called since, nor did Gail want to speak to him until she had decided what to say. The right words had to be sent out like strands of a spider's web. Connections between men and women were that fragile sometimes.

  The hotel had been on Ocean Drive, four stories high, painted like a birthday cake, with pink neon around its name. Now Gail couldn't remember the name. She had gone inside with her head down and Anthony's jacket hiding the rip in her dress. The lobby was Art Deco, but the room was Motel 6: cheap, framed prints of palm trees over the double bed, tourist brochures on the dresser, a refrigerator that charged ten bucks for a split of domestic champagne. She found plastic glasses on a tray in the bathroom and unwrapped them while Anthony unlaced his shoes and set them beside a Danish modem chair with a cigarette bum in the cushion.

  People came and went in the halls, talking in foreign languages. Mariachi music from the restaurant next door was occasionally drowned out by the bass throb of a car stereo, somebody cruising with the windows down. The champagne, too sharp to drink, went flat in the plastic glasses. Was it the place that was so off? Or their mood? By nine o'clock they were heading back across the causeway toward Miami. At one point she took Anthony's hand, but couldn't think of a damn thing to say that wouldn't ring with falsity.

  She didn't want to be so ungrateful as to tell a man who had just whisked her to a hotel room, bought champagne, and kissed the bruises on her backside that she didn't have a perfectly delightful time. It would have been rude. And the truth was, she didn't know how she felt until later, when she was at home staring at the ceiling. She finally slept, but her dreams were fitful, and she awoke crying out, her nightgown twisted and soaked with sweat.

  Saturday afternoon, Patrick came over to thank her and stayed to fix her roof. It cost four hundred dollars for lumber and roofing paper and white concrete tiles. He let Karen help, and they had a good time getting filthy. Gail cooked hamburgers on the grill. Patrick came back early Sunday, and Gail went up there with them, sawing and hammering and setting in the new tiles. She broke a fingernail and worked the pain out of her derriere, and wondered if it would be better to jump off the roof headfirst then, or wait till after the meeting with Paul Robineau on Monday.

  Gail looked up when she heard a salsa rhythm tapped on the door. It opened and Miriam Ruiz came in, raising one shoulder, then the other. Her hair was in a ponytail, and it bounced and swung. She bumped her little fanny against the door to close it, then cha-cha'ed across the room. She carried a stack of pages from a yellow legal pad. "You're cheerful," Gail said.

  Miriam stopped, looked down at her. "Gail, are you okay?"

  "I have a headache, that's all. What did you bring me?"

  Smiling, she dropped the papers on Gail's desk. They were notes handwritten in four shades of ink, with doodles, cross-outs, and arrows pointing this way and that. Gail turned a few pages. Lists of property, legal descriptions, dates, addresses—

  "It's my research on Easton," Miriam announced.

  Gail remembered that she had wanted to know what real estate the Easton Trust owned, although now she couldn't recall why. She rubbed her forehead. "You want to just cut to the end? I'm getting ready for that meeting at noon."

  Miriam plopped into a chair, her ponytail bouncing. "Okay. Here it is. I found out who owns the company Carla Napolitano worked for. And also the company that owns the nightclub. It's another company, called Biscayne Corporation. Biscayne owns both of them. And guess who's an officer in Biscayne Corporation?"

  Gail shook her head.

  'Take a wild guess."

  "Miriam, please."

  She grinned, a wide red smile. "Howard Odell."

  "No."

  "Yes."

  "How in the world—"

  "Mira." Miriam stood up and spread her notes over the desk, then ran around to see them better, standing beside Gail's chair. "Okay. I was checking the property records for the Easton Trust, like you said. I went back to the Sixties, which is as far as you can go on computers. There were fifty-six transactions. Easton acquired most of it from estates, people leaving it in their wills. Easton sold a bunch."

  "Who signed the deeds, Sanford Ehringer?"

  "Sure did. He was the only real person that I could find. Sanford V. Ehringer, as Trustee. And here's a list of property that they still own, for investment, I guess."

  There were a shopping center, upscale apartment buildings, vacant land. All of it prime, worth millions. Gail tapped one of the entries with her pen.

  "Lincoln Road, numbers 801 to 839. The Tillett Gallery is in that block. The night I went to the gallery, Howard Odell was there. He said he knew Rudy from the Art Deco League, but this could be the real connection. I'll bet the Tilletts pay rent to the Easton Trust."


  Miriam shuffled through her notes. "One of the properties Easton sold—here it is—1470 Drexel, Miami Beach. It's where you met Frankie Delgado."

  "Easton used to own that dump?"

  "Somebody died and left it to them, and the Trust sold it in 1982 to the Biscayne Corporation. So I was wondering who owns that building now, so I ran the legal description and came up with—voila!—Atlantic Enterprises."

  "Which also owns Wild Cherry."

  "And then I go, well, as long as I'm on the computer—" Miriam took two sheets from near the bottom"—let's see what else Atlantic owns. So I find five pieces of property, and Atlantic bought every one of them from Biscayne Corporation in 1982 and 1983. So then I start wondering about Biscayne. I found twelve more properties. Biscayne still has eight of them, but it sold four to Seagate, also in the early Eighties." On a blank sheet of paper she drew a circle, two lines coming off it, and a box at the end of each line. She labeled the circle Biscayne and the boxes Atlantic and Seagate. "Seventeen pieces of real estate. Biscayne sold five to Atlantic, four to Seagate, kept eight for itself."

  "When were Atlantic and Seagate incorporated? Do you remember?"

  "1979 and 1981."

  "And Biscayne?"

  "I don't know, but look what else I found. You'll like this." Miriam produced a computer printout. Between the scrawls and the phone numbers and scratch-outs, was a list of names. Two of them Gail didn't recognize. The treasurer, she did. G. Howard Odell.

  Gail sat up straight in her chair. "Howard!" She read the address. 19 West Flagler Street, with a telephone number. "Did you call this?"

  "It's an answering machine," Miriam said. "A woman's voice. 'You have reached the offices of the Biscayne Corporation, please leave a message, blah blah.' I called four different times and always got a recording. I could go over there and knock on the door if you want."

  But her voice was trailing off. She snatched a sheet out of the stack and held it with both hands against her chest. "Ready for the juicy part? I said to myself, wow, Biscayne sold that office building on Drexel to a company that owns a nude nightclub. I wonder what the other properties are?"